At AUSA, Textron Systems showcased their Next Generation Squad Weapon candidates, along with a historical perspective of weapons developed as part of the Lightweight Small Arms Technology program, which started out life in 5.56mm and then transitioned to 6.5mm. NGSW requires a 6.8mm cartridge which performs similar to 270 WSM. The top left weapon is their belt-fed Automatic Rifle and top right is their Carbine.
Below is the latest version of the Carbine. The carbine in the middle of the photo above has been seen recently. It is a bid sample with a commercial battery pack.
Textron brings almost two decades of Case, Telescoped weapons and ammunition development. This 6.8mm polymer cased ammunition fully encapsulates the projectile into the case. Olin Winchester, who produces over 4 billion wounds of small arms ammunition a year, will manufacture the 6.8mm rounds of the solution is selected by the Army.
LMT developed the suppressor for these weapons which utilized their virtual baffle technology.
Textron reports they will be prepared to deliver test article prototypes this Spring for the Army’s final down select for NGSW.
SSD I think you meant “Rounds” and Not “Wounds” in the 3rd paragraph.
Olin Winchester, who produces over 4 billion (wounds) of small arms ammunition a year, will manufacture the 6.8mm rounds of the solution is selected by the Army.
I thought it was an intentional Freudian slip…
Well played sir.
I thought the ammo was supposed to reduce volume. Those look as big as 7.62 NATO
Bigger in fact. 6.8 projectile with a plastic Casing AROUND it with sufficient internal volume to achieve the ballistic requirements of the request.
Is that a battery pack in the ‘2019’ buttstock?
What is the purpose of the battery pack?
Odds are good that the battery will provide power to all your accessories and scopes and whatnot. It would allow the individual components to be smaller and lighter.
From what I’ve been explained, the battery pack will power all the devices attacked to their rifle. Currently as you know we place batteries directly onto the accessories. The battery pack will power all of the devices attached.
And when you bend the rail, damaging the electronic system?
You’ve now deadlined every electronic device on your gun instead of just bending a rail.
I’m not a proponent of this program or these massive clunky weapons but how would bending your rail deadline every electronic device on your gun? Damaging your electronic system could definitely disable your attachments on that system temporarily until they could be affixed to a new host, but I’m not seeing how that action would cause permanent damage resulting in a deadline of said attachment unless somehow the terminals on the attachment themselves received damage.
I meant if you damage the interface system on the gun you deadline the electronics in that they will no longer work on the host gun.
Sure they’ll work on a new gun, but if they had individual batteries they would all continue working independent of any gun damage.
The best bet would standardize batteries used for every item.
I’m tracking with ya now dude. Yeah I don’t know how I feel about powered rails/weapon systems. I feel like that’s where everything is going eventually which I’m somewhat interested in as long as the devices themselves have some kind of hub battery and the rail doesn’t turn into some clunky huge POS. But that thing there in the middle… That’s not the ticket. I look at a weapon like this which is bulkier, heavier, has a higher recoil impulse and less rounds in the mag and i’m trying to picture it working in the current model of a gender integrated Infantry. That and several other aspects seem problematic.
Add an m4 stock of any type to anything and it looks dated and unattractive.
What is the purpose of all that mass forward of the magazine well? Looks horribly bulky and the ergonomics would be awful.
Battery pack powering all devices. Sweet, single point of failure battery and leads. Way to take the advantage of modularity out
It seems a fair percentage of the time one ends up shooting them through their rifle, or our guys get shot through their primary.
What happens when chunks of super size battery become frag?
The chunky fore-end reminds me of an ARX-100/200.
The battery pack makes the whole system look clunky and unwieldy.
The battery made me immediately envision the future. I see a private with wires hanging out of the stock or a broken attachment point beingbasked “where’s your battery pack” “mine was broken sir”. But he’s still considered fully mission capable on paper.
So where does the grenade launcher go with all of that mass on the bottom?Even on the 2019 prototype that’s alot, I’d understand if its somehow a part of the firing mechanism, but the battery was moved to the stock, so I wouldn’t see why any other electronics wouldnt be moved as well. I really want to see this cartrage succeed, because what’s slinging downrange is probably most important, it just needs a good form factor. Smart rails aren’t as high a priority as handling and cost I my opinion.
A simple solution and alternative to smart rails would be having cables from individually powered devices to a small hub/connector inside the hand guard, separated from the barrel, then you can also change out the stock and grip. That would allow everyone to have the same rifle, then those that need the smart capability can get an upgrade kit. I’m only an rotc cadet and mechanical engineering student, but that kind of solution seems alot more realistic at this point in time.
If you read the article, you’d see that the one in the middle on the right was the technology demonstration version, the one on top is the finalized version.
Yes, i specified and was referring to the 2019 version(top) in my posting
the dual rail collapsing stock on the top one looks very interesting to me, looks like better cheek weld then a lot of the PDW style stocks out there
But it’s not a PDW, it’s a carbine the size of the M16.